Duke Blue Devils
The team everyone loves to hate, the perennial power, the Blue Blood. The Blue Devils have a loaded roster again that is centered around two fantastic freshmen. Duke gets high-quality freshmen every year, but they have not gotten two freshmen who have the power to lead them to the National Championship since the Zion Williamson days. Cooper Flagg is one of the best prospects the game has ever seen play in college. His counterpart Kon Kneuppel is a great shooter and can pick up the slack when Flagg needs it. Flagg just scored 42 points over the weekend and is going to be the first pick of the NBA draft and will likely be one of the finalists for the Wooden Award.
The Blue Devils are so much more than Flagg and Knueppel; they have an extremely talented roster that poses a matchup nightmare for anyone they are playing. This is the first Blue Devils team that I can remember that defends like this one does. KenPom has Duke currently ranked second overall with an offense that is currently 7th in efficiency in the country. The defense comes in ranked second in the country behind only Houston. The calling card for Duke is normally offense, but the defensive ability and length of this year’s Blue Devils is what puts them in this conversation.
So, what about the head-to-head? Duke beat Auburn, and they are currently favored to win the remaining games on their schedule. With an easier schedule that can avoid all the potential land mines in the Big 12 and SEC, don’t be surprised if Duke is the overall number-one team next week. Will they deserve that ranking? I do not think Duke is the best team in the country, but they did beat Auburn and don’t play any of the other teams in question, so they are 1-0 against the field, albeit with a very small sample size.